I got mixed reactions from a can of crushed pine fruit.

I was on Facebook just now, and I spotted this ad in the sidebar:

I've seen some terrible ads in my time, but this one takes home the prize for vaguest. There are four elements to this ad (title, URL, image, caption), and none of them seem to be related to each other in the slightest, nor does any one on its own give me any clue what the hell it's meant to be promoting.

So of course I clicked it. Even while my brain screamed at me not to. I see hundreds of internet ads every day, and I never click a single one. Many of those ads have millions of dollars behind them, with marketing genuises and skilled designers hand-crafting them to lure me in. Many of those ads are directly targeted at me based on my age, location and interests. Many of them are genuinely interesting to me. But I don't click them. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because I know that when I click an ad, money changes hands. Even if it's a fraction of a cent, I don't want them to have it. I don't want someone to get rich by waving things in front of my face. Screw those guys. But despite all that, I clicked this ad. I clicked this, of all ads.

I had literally no idea where the link would take me. I certainly knew for sure it wasn't going to take me to accounts.google.com. My mind boggled at the mystery of what this ad could possibly be trying to sell me, or why it was presented to me specifically in the first place. I figured there were only two possibilites: either they were targeting incredibly stupid people who would read the ad and say, "Ooh, good news! It looks like I will like here. Pretty ladies." (in which case I am quite insulted that Facebook has decided to show this ad to me); or they were targeting people who like to think they understand the logic behind everything that's presented to them, and wouldn't be able to resist the mystery of what this ad was promoting (in which case I am quite impressed, because clearly it worked pretty fucking well - I clicked it and now I seem to be writing a blog about it).

As soon as I clicked, an overwhelming feeling of dread enveloped me, as if I had just given away my credit card details to a Nigerian prince, invited 70,000 strangers to an open bar party at my house, signalled a hitman to murder my family, and locked my keys inside my car with the engine running all at once. I had no idea where I was going. Not a single clue. I had just jumped down a deep, dark rabbit hole whilst cramming my foot in my mouth. With no pants on. Holding a live grenade. While the page redirected, I accepted my inevitable fate and prepared for the sweet embrace of death.

But apparently I'm not dead. It brought me here:

SERIOUSLY WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON HERE

I started with Bulbasaur.

Oh boy!
I've been doing lots of stuff with my band Brodown lately. Last weekend we recorded our debut album, and this weekend we started practising our live set.

We haven't really practised for playing live before. It might sound weird to someone who's never been in a band, but practising for recording and practising for gigs are actually pretty different.
We don't usually play so many songs (11) in such a short space of time (30 minutes). Brodown is definitely way more exhausting than any other band I've been in before. Soooo much energy required.

Add to all this the fact that The Statics are currently organising our second 2011 EP launch and a trip to Sydney, and you've got some very exciting times!

Also I'm eating musky things and they are deliiiicious

a positive flux of vibrational chemistry.

where am i? well, i'm in a van. in the back seat. on the left. we (the statics) are driving around melbourne, sussing out some locations to work out the finer points of the execution of our latest harebrained scheme.
(note to self: last sentence was badly structured. get sam to edit.)

i am wearing glasses because i wear glasses now. i didn't used to wear glasses, but now i do. apparently i've been somewhat blind for most of my life, but i never knew how much glasses would help. turns out they help A BUNCH. i can see all kinds of shit. it's awesome.
the downside, of course, is that i look even more like a dweeb now. which i'm cool with. i was never the prettiest pig in the pen anyway.

also sam has been staying at my house lately, and it's been totally awesome. i love being with her aaaall the time, and it's just that much easier when we're sharing a single space, and we don't need to spend time figuring out whose house we're going to, or going home to get clothes or cars.
i can't wait till we can afford to move out into our own place, and we can both feel at home in our own space. it'll be blisssssss.

anyway enough about me. now read the rest of my blog posts.

oh, you cast a shadow.

i get john c. reilly and john c. mcginley confused.

all the formulae, strategies and plans.

i signed up for a free seminar this morning, an introduction to printing processes. i left home really early to make sure i'd be here on time, and arrived almost an hour early. oh well. better early than never.

for some reason this morning i was remembering a book i once read, in which there was a group of vandals who went around in the dead of night correcting grammatical errors on their town's street signs. that wasn't the main focus of the book. that would probably be really boring and tedious. but the main character and the girl he liked somehow got dragged along with the vandals one night. then i think they made out. but i can't remember anything else about the book. i should ask sam if she's read it. PROBABLY NOT.

so anyway what's up? how are you? what've you been up to? what did you have for breakfast? what's your favourite beatles album? would you like your bananas sliced upwards, or westwards? in a perfect world, would you be santa claus?

let me know

via telepathy

the formulas are falling apart.

i have a little friend. but he won't be around much longer.

occasionally i get white marks in my fingernails. sam tells me it's a sign of some kind of deficiency. however, my theory is that it's a result of my body's surplus of excellence. the proof is in the pudding:



yeah. that's right. i have a friend in my fingernail. and his name is =0.
he's been with me for a while. and he's surprised by pretty much everything.

but unfortunately, as my fingernails grow (which they do), the white marks grow out with them. i just cut my fingernails today, and this little dude has about two millimetres until he loses his mouth.
i thought i should share him with the world before i have to bury him.

also first picture on this blog ever. HISTORY IN THE MAKING, PEOPLE

nod your head.

kev suggested i should change the name of this blog to "pat doesn't do stuff - or if he does, updating his blog is not part of that stuff."



it made me giggle

the money will roll right in.

i don't have to be up by any specific time tomorrow. i seriously can't remember the last time this happened. i've been really busy you guys, okay?

josh, leo and i are forming a punk band for the sole reason of playing at punkfest at EV's this year, then breaking up (possibly on stage). tonight i wrote our first song. it's called "milk is a marvelous drink" and it's awesome.

tonight i also listened through every demo i recorded last year. there are a few songs that i still would really like to play in bands, but they're not right for any band i'm currently active in. it'd needa be a three-piece. made of awesomeness. i've given some thought to just pulling a band together out of the very talented pool of mates i've got and just recording an EP of the songs. but then i'd just wanna play them live, and i don't even have time to rehearse/record the songs in the first place, let alone tour them. there are so many things i wanna do that i don't have time for.

speaking of which, SLEEEEEP